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How strawberries could help inhibit Alzheimer’s symptoms

by JUSTIN CABA

Like snacking on strawberries? Here’s why you may want to keep reaching for more fruits and vegetables.

A recent study out of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies found that a daily serving of fisetin, an antioxidant commonly found in fruits and vegetables, reduced Alzheimer’s symptoms in mice who were predisposed to the disease. Previous studies on fisetin have revealed this flavonoid’s positive effect on the degenerative aging of brain neurons.

“We had already shown that in normal animals, fisetin can improve memory,” Pamela Maher, leader of the study and senior staff scientist in Salk’s Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory said in a statement. “What we showed here is that it also can have an effect on animals prone to Alzheimer’s.”

What we realized is that fisetin has a number of properties that we thought might be beneficial when it comes to Alzheimer’s.

Maher and her colleagues from the Salk Institute began adding fisetin to food for three-month-old mice who had two gene mutations linked to Alzheimer’s. Throughout the course of six months, each mouse had their memory and learning skills tested through a series of water maze tests. At nine months of age, mice that were fed a daily dose of fisetin performed remarkably well on these tests compared with mice that did not receive any of the flavonoid.

Further research performed in collaboration with the University of California, San Diego compared different molecules in the brains of both the mice that did not receive fisetin and those that did. Mice affected by Alzheimer’s had pathways of cellular inflammation that were turned on, but these same pathways were replaced by dampened and anti-inflammatory molecules in mice that were not experiencing any trouble with learning and memory.

“What we realized is that fisetin has a number of properties that we thought might be beneficial when it comes to Alzheimer’s,” Maher explained. “Even as the disease would have been progressing, the fisetin was able to continue preventing symptoms. It seems to act on other pathways that haven’t been seriously investigated in the past as therapeutic targets.”

What’s next

The research team hopes to look into how long it takes for fisetin to alleviate symptoms of Alzheimer’s. They also want to step away from the preventive model of research to discover what affect fisetin can have on people already suffering from Alzheimer’s. Unfortunately, fisetin had no effect on amyloid plaques, a buildup of protein in the brain that has been blamed for Alzheimer’s development. Fisetin is commonly found in fruits and vegetables including, most notably, strawberries and cucumbers.

“It may be that compounds like this that have more than one target are most effective at treating Alzheimer’s disease, because it’s a complex disease where there are a lot of things going wrong,” Maher added. We started the mice on the drugs before they had any memory loss. But obviously human patients don’t go to the doctor until they are already having memory problems.”